Tony Barbee is expected to fill his coaching staff at Auburn entirely of his former assistants at UTEP, a source close to the hiring process confirmed Sunday to the Opelika-Auburn News.
Milt Wagner, Tony Madlock and Randall Dickey are expected to be named assistant coaches, while Mike Babul will be Barbee’s director of basketball operations. All four served on Barbee’s staff at UTEP throughout his four-year stint with the Miners.
Wagner has been coaching alongside Barbee since both were at Memphis under then-coach John Calipari. Wagner was a star as a player at Louisville in the late ’80s, when he helped lead the team to three Final Fours and the 1986 NCAA Championship. He is Louisville’s fifth-leading scorer in program history and played one year in the NBA with the Miami Heat before playing abroad in Israel and Europe.
Madlock spent nine years as an assistant at Arkansas State, where he spent half of his time as an assistant coach and the other half as assistant head coach, before joining Barbee at UTEP. Madlock played his college ball at Memphis, where he was a three-year starter from 1988-92.
Barbee inherited Dickey when he signed on with UTEP in 2006. Dickey spent six years with the Miners. Before landing at UTEP, Dickey was an assistant under Eddie Sutton at Oklahoma State from 1994-99 and an assistant at Washington State from 1999-2003.
Babul played at UMass while Barbee was an assistant coach and also worked alongside him for one season at Memphis as an assistant director of basketball operations. Babul lettered at UMass from 1997-2000 and served as the team’s captain during his senior season. Babul also spent one season as an assistant coach at Youngstown State.
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